In July 2011, oil refiners Holly Corporation and Frontier Oil finalized a highly synergistic merger that created a super refiner with operations throughout the mid-continent, south
western and Rocky Mountain regions. The new HollyFrontier Corp. was quick to capitalize on an unprecedented glut of oil that had come about at land-locked Cushing, Oklahoma. The net
effect of this year-long anomaly was to hand a considerable raw-materials cost advantage to refiners that sourced their crude inland rather than from the coast. Among them:
HollyFrontier, which recorded a 90% increase in revenue in 2011, swiftly followed by a 185% hike in revenue in the first quarter. -- N.S.